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What have Elvis Costello and the Furey Brothers got in common? Well, not a lot, apart from making money by making music and having appeared on telly this week.
The Fureys wowed 'em once again on Top Of The Pops emboldened by the knowledge that "Sweet Sixteen" is at number 14 in the charts and rising fast. When Finbar Furey's slightly bloodshot gimlet eye fills half your TV screen you know that the boys from Ballyfermot are to be taken seriously... or else.
It wasn't quite so easy to take Elvis Costello seriously when he talked to the South Bank Show (UTV, Sunday). For a start, it's difficult to tell if he's looking you straight in the eye, like Finbar, through those thick dark glasses he borrowed from Roy Orbison.
For all we knew he could have been laughing his bead off when be said things like, "for quite a while I've had the feeling that what I do is built around a perversion."
We followed the New Wave guru to Nashville, Tennessee and watched him record his latest LP which carries the warning: "This album contains country music which may annoy narrow minded people." This, of course, was the arty South Bank Show's excuse for devoting a whole programme to a band which, a couple of years ago, would have been relegated to a very late spot on the Old Grey Whistle Test.
After all, Elvis (real name John MacManus) once described country and western as "whining sentimental rubbish." So why the change of heart? We didn't really find the answer, but Elvis's recording session in Nashville provided some curious insights into the pop industry.
The star of the show was a famous Nashville record producer, one Billy Sherrill hired, presumably at great expense, to guide the English rockers through the esoteric realms of C and W.
He went through his ordeal with the air of a Trappist monk who has been summoned from his monastery to lead a lynch party — the lynchee being his beloved Country and Western music. "These guys don't play like Nashville musicians" he moaned. "My silence is — uh, what's the word — congratulatory".
But for all that, I suspect that Elvis, behind those thick shades, is laughing all the way to the Pass machine.
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